selling images

[ser1992]

i was just wondering how many of you guys/gals are selling your work. if you are what is the most pain free way of doing it? do you run through geddyimages.com (or whatever it is) or any other stock image website. i might be interested in doing this if it wasnt too much of a pain to do so.

thanks in advance for your help,


bryan

[daSnarf]

Have you checked istock?

[budafist]

I think you mean getty images. From a buying perspective, I prefer cheap sites like istockphoto.com. But that's not really ideal for the seller since cheap photos mean low pay right? I guess the upside is that your photo has the potential to get hundreds of downloads since it is so cheap and therefore you have the potential to make more $.

I've only used getty images once because their prices are so steep. I'm sure others use getty though, so I'm not saying it's unpopular, just not popular with me!

[Virgo Nightingale]

We never use Getty. We have a subscription to photos.com. They have plenty of photos and the subscription rate isn't deadly. If they don't have what we're looking for, we often go to Liquid Library or Fotosearch.

[ser1992]

sorry i was talking about possibly selling my photography in the future, and was wondering how to do that, not buy it. so you have to be a member of a site first then?

[(gra-ph!c-D'sig-nah)]

Yeap!

[budafist]

Sorry I was answering from a buyer's perspective because I don't sell images. It's important to know where buyers go when they want images - then you can put yourself in that spot where they look.

[mchilly]

My perspective if I'm gonna buy images, I would directly go to the search engines and search those top sites who sells images. Who ever is the most ranked site then I go for that site. :D

[budafist]

sorry i was talking about possibly selling my photography in the future, and was wondering how to do that, not buy it. so you have to be a member of a site first then?

How could you possibly sell something without being a member? Did you want to do it all anonymously? It might be a bit hard for them to pay you!

[PrintDriver]

I go where the images are, but I stay away from free/subscription sites for the most part. Mostly because I need an image-specific release to give to my clients. I have a reasonable expectation that the images shown on a site actually belong to the photographer/owner in question and that this person can be contacted for questions or rights releases above and beyond the stock site license if necessary.
You can't do this professionally and remain anonymous.

[Steve Buchanan]

Ok,

to dive into an area that's controversial (among photographers)...

There are three major models for buying and selling stock photography.

1. Rights managed. This is the original stock photography model that basically says, you tell us what you want to use it for, ie, how big, how many, for whom and how long etc. We'll give you a price. Use the image for the stated usages and nothing else. Usually the most expensive route but generally the highest quality.

2. Royalty Free. First surfaced about 15 years ago (think PhotoDisc) You paid a set fee for the photos and could use them however you wanted forever (with a few exclusions) Generally cheaper than rights managed but the quality is lower

3. Micro Payment Stock. New kid on the block originated with (I think) istockphoto. Images are extremely cheap, between 1 and 5 dollars but quality varies widely from pretty good to down right awful.

From a contributors point of view most rights managed and royalty free agencies split the revenues 50/50 with their photographers. Some have fees for cataloging and keywording but those are relatively minor. Unless you have a significant body of saleable work or very specific subject matter this probably isn't the route for a casual shooter.

MicroStock is different. Istockphoto originally started as a swapping list for designers. If you're a designer you probably have a good eye and some technical prowess so this might be a good fit if you want to put the work into it.

Be realistic about the work involved. From a personal point of view, I've looked at microstock for some of my images that my traditional stock agent doesn't want (i'm with stockfood since I primarily shoot food) but decided the prospect of earning 20 cents on an image doesn't really inspire me. Not to mention the fact that I think commoditizing (is that a word) art is a bad idea.

For what it's worth
Steve

sorry for the long post but it's a complicated subject

[budafist]

Well, it's good to hear from a seller's point of view - for us buyers anyway.

We're only small fry here, so we tend to lean away from the rights managed images simply for ease and price. While there are images on istockphoto that aren't a very good quality, I don't purchase these. I'm saddened that they do pay so low though. 20 cents an image doesn't seem worth it to me either - but I'm somewhat glad that people do it so that I can access cheap images.

Why DO photographers sell themselves short?

[PrintDriver]

I've found Royalty Free images to be comparable in quality, at times, to Rights Managed. It all depends on where you look and what the original source was. As more and more RF images go digital, yes, the quality is going down. In fact, with the advent of digital cameratography, the quality of the whole stock image industry is steadily going downhill. Not to mention the digitizing of entire libraries of images at resolutions too low to be used for anything larger than a magazine page (not even a spread!).

When selling your images, decide the market in which you want to be categorized. It all depends on your confidence level in your artform. If Photography is not your mainstream artform and you are only doing stock for pennies on the dollar, why bother?